Measuring Inequality

A worker on the National Living Wage (NLW) would need to work for 410 years to earn just one year’s average salary of one of the UK’s top bosses. That’s a similar difference to the length between the Olympic marathon (42,195m) and a 100m sprint (a difference of 422 times).

Today’s Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK report from the IFS sheds light on how households on different incomes across the country have fared in recent years, putting these trends in historical context.

Anyone reading a paper or tuning into the news this week will have been hard pressed to miss the stories on child poverty. With new figures out this week numerous organisations and commentators had predicted a large rise in the figure.